The environment beat goes unfilled for months at certain newspapers where it once flourished.

Environmental reporters at other papers seem to be pulled from the beat more frequently for unrelated assignments.

The beat is abolished at yet another newspaper, once a bastion of environmental investigations.

Do these recent developments mean the environment beat is ailing in some fundamental way, that editors are de-emphasizing environmental news?

Or is environmental journalism simply in one of its periodic slumps, brought about this time by a sluggish economy and an extraordinary sequence of news events that started with the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

Environmental coverage has always been "cyclical," with notable peaks and valleys of coverage since the 1970s, says Jim Detjen, the Society of Environmental Journalists' (SEJ) founding president and now director of the Knight Center for Environmental Journalism at Michigan State University.

"My perception is that certainly since September 11, news media coverage has declined in many ways on the environment," Detjen said. "There's a finite amount of space in the news hole, and so much has been taken up by the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq."

That assessment agrees with statistics compiled by the weekly Tyndall Report, which monitors network television news. All combined, ABC, CBS and NBC devoted 617 minutes to environmental and energy issues in 2001, but only 236 (this is the same number twice) in 2002.

"The environment beat received minimal coverage (on network newscasts) throughout the Clinton Administration," said Andrew Tyndall, who published the report. President George W. Bush's election revived network interest (in the environment), and coverage was on at a record pace (high) in 2001, but the September 11 attacks brought a return to "minimal" attention, he said.

At the same time, SEJ membership has continued an unflagging growth trend, with the biggest increases in recent years occurring in 2002 and in the first months of 2003.

Dan Fagin, reporter for Newsday and SEJ's president, said he, like other environmental reporters, has been asked in recent months to help cover major stories like the space shuttle disaster and war-related news. "I can't complain, it's no big deal," he said, adding that his editors still want environmental stories.

Throughout SEJ’s membership, Fagin said, “some reporters are being pulled off the beat, but more prevalently, it’s hard to get editors’ attention or space in the newspaper or on a broadcast.”

Although he thinks this will be a short-term problem, with environmental reporters compelled, for now, to “concentrate on writing fewer stories better,” Fagin has decided that no overarching appraisal is possible. "The more I've gotten into it, it's like anything, I see it's hard to draw clear conclusions about what's going on. So often, [editors’] decisions are made on the personnel involved, and there's not some grand decision based on what's best for the beat."

Certainly, a look at some of the nation’s newspapers -- historically, the place where most reporters specializing in environmental news have worked -- reveals a decidedly mixed picture, with a spectrum of positive, negative and ambiguous signs regarding the beat's health.

At the Baltimore Sun, for instance, the two full-time environmental reporting jobs have been unstaffed for nearly two years since Joel McCord retired in a buyout offer and Heather Dewar took a leave of absence for a fellowship.

"We're covering the environment, but just not as well as we used to," said Tom Horton, who was the Sun's environment reporter from 1974-87 and has written a weekly environmental column for the Sun for the last 10 years. "I wish they'd get two people back. I think the beat deserves two people."

Mike Shultz, a former environment writer at the Baltimore Evening Sun who worked for the past six years at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said he has observed declining coverage throughout that region prior to the 9/11 attacks, though he added that excellent work continues at some newspapers.

The beat has also been empty at the Kansas City Star for a prolonged periodever since former SEJ President Mike Mansur, after 10 years as environment writer, was reassigned about a year ago as a local government reporter concentrating on investigations. He reflected on the beat's uncertain future nationally in the spring (2003) issue of SEJournal

"The beat's open (at the Star), but there's a hiring freeze," said Mansur, who was part of its team project examining the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1992. Like the Sun, other reporters at the Star are writing some environmental stories while the beat position is vacant.

At the Baton Rouge Advocate, a southern newspaper long known for voluminous and incisive environmental coverage, two-time Meeman Award winner Mike Dunne was shifted to the City Hall beat earlier this year, where he said he was told his experience was needed.

As a result, environmental coverage has been divided among general assignment reporters "who have lots of other duties as well," said Dunne, who covered the environment as a project reporter in the 1980s and assumed the beat in 1997.

"It leaves Louisiana, which is an environmental nightmare, without anyone who is a full-time environmental reporter," he said.

At Louisiana's largest newspaper, the Times-Picayune of New Orleans, reporter Mark Schleifstein, member of a 1997 Pulitzer-winning team that reported on threats to the world’s fisheries, wryly calls himself "the alleged environmental reporter," because “I get pulled off (the beat) all the time.”

Schleifstein said he understands that being shifted off the beat may have been a more common experience for some other environmental reporters lately, but that hasn’t been the case for him, even with his space-shuttle and other non-environmental assignments lately. “Unfortunately,” he said, “I’m used to it.”

Still, he thinks it's a "conceit" among environmental reporters to think that "no one should touch us," and believes that non-beat assignments simply mean environmental reporters "have proved to editors that they’re capable of handling complex subjects."

Dina Cappiello became the Houston Chronicle's environment writer last fall after three years on the beat at the Albany Times-Union. Soon, she found herself helping with the Chronicle's intensive shuttle coverage after the Columbia disintegrated on Feb. 1. Then she spent three weeks in February and March writing a column as part of the newspaper’s expanded coverage of the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this year.

Even with that assignment, Cappiello produced a number of environmental stories during the rodeo. How did she do it? "Long hours," she said. "During the rodeo, I worked straight through the weekends."

Tony Freemantle, Cappiello's predecessor for a year on the Chronicle's one-person environment beat, said there had been some talk about turning it into a two-person beat when she was hired, but he decided to return to his former job as a senior reporter for major stories and special projects.

"I thought about (staying on the beat) for awhile," Freemantle said, "but I didn't think the newspaper could afford two people." (Chronicle reporters and editors have long lamented the newspaper's small staff. Recently, for example, no reporters have been assigned to cover county government or the federal courts on a full-time basis.)

At newspapers where staffing has increased on the environment beat recently, the move is attributed to top editors who regard it as particularly significant in their regions.

Joey Bunch, who formerly covered environmental news at the Mobile Register, was hired to be the second reporter on the Denver Post's formerly one-person environment beat last year. Greg Moore, who became the Post's editor last year after being managing editor of the Boston Globe, said he believes strongly in the beat's importance, Bunch said.

The Los Angeles Times, meanwhile, has increased its environment beat to six full-time positions -- air quality, environmental and human health, coastal and ocean issues, forests and water, urban environmental issues, and public lands and wildlife -- said Frank Clifford, assistant state editor and editor for environmental news.

When Clifford was an environmental reporter for the Times, other reporters assumed his duties and those of fellow reporter Marla Cone when they took overlapping leaves of absence. Those other reporters stayed on the beat when he and Cone returned, Clifford said. "We didn't move anyone out. There's no lack of stories."

Other factors at play in the expansion of the beat, he said, are the support of assistant managing editor Miriam Powel; the need to cover shifts in federal environmental policies, and California’s resistance to some of them; and a bigger news hole allotted for California news.

Another newspaper with a famously large group of environmental reporters, The Oregonian in Portland, has experienced a slight reduction in beat staffing, said Michael Milstein, who covers natural resources and public lands there.

With the newspaper’s air and water quality position unfilled for about a year, the environment and science team now has four environmental reporters, one of whom has also been covering medical research since the retirement of a staffer who had handled that coverage.

“Compared to other papers this size, we're still very well staffed,” Milstein said. “All these issues are pretty prominent in the Northwest and have a bearing on the economy and culture of the area."

A different, and perhaps more typical, example of beat shrinkage occurred at another large newspaper, which had a one-person environment beat. The reporter now covers the environment and has a second important beat. As a result, "neither one is covered well," said this journalist, who asked not to be identified.

One academic specialist on environmental reporting, JoAnn Valenti, believes that regardless of such instances, the beat is in good shape.

"In spite of an economy that's taken a dive, in spite of a war that's depleted everyone's resources, the environment beat is holding a steady course," said Valenti, professor emeritus of communications at Brigham Young University.

Valenti has been collaborating with other academic researchers in a region-by-region study to obtain a "baseline" picture of how many newspaper reporters are engaged in environmental reporting, along with who and where they are found.

Initial surveys conducted in 2000 and 2001 prior to 9/11 found that there was at least one full-time reporter on the environment beat at 52 percent of newspapers in the Mountain West and at 51 percent in New England. Although formal results will not be released until this fall, a similar survey in the South is expected to show "the beat is holding solid" there, with more than half of newspapers assigning at least one environmental reporter, Valenti said.

She acknowledged that some environmental journalists "out there on the front line are having a hard time, and their experience is their reality, but it's not a reflection of the totality, of the experience of all environmental reporters in the country."

Even those who suspect the beat is now at a low ebb believe environmental coverage will return to greater prominence.

"Is this something that will recover?" Detjen said. "I suspect it will. I suspect that it will be an environmental calamity or disaster that will spur on lots of coverage.

Said Fagin: “In the long run, I think the trend line is positive in terms of quality and quantity. Lots of people are saying the glass is half-empty. I think there will be more and better environmental coverage over the long term.”

"It'll come back," agreed Jim Bruggers, former SEJ president and current board member and reporter at the Louisville Courier-Journal. "Everyone's attention is elsewhere now, but that situation won't last forever. It's a challenge for those of us in the beat now to keep it alive."